Astrophysics

What is Sacred Geometry? (# 38)

The idea that our reality comes from geometry is not new. Well qualified academics have had similar ideas. For example, according to Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford:

Mathematics has an attractive quality: you don’t need to ask who created the mathematics. It is something that exists outside of time and doesn’t need a moment when it was created. It just is. Perhaps we should reverse the old adage ‘God is a mathematician’. Perhaps mathematics is the god everyone is chasing. If I replace the word ‘God’ with the word ‘mathematics’ in Aquinas’s attempt at a definition (of God), I think it works quite well: ‘Mathematics is to be thought of as existing outside the domain of existents, as a cause from which comes everything that exists in different forms.’

What We Cannot Know, Marcus Du Sautoy, 4th Estate, 2016, (p 297)

Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers suggested that geometry preceded the creation of the cosmos. Toward the end of a lifetime of research, Professor John Wheeler, an associate of Einstein and a leading researcher in quantum mechanics, concluded that geometry is the building block for particles. Scientists now generally agree that we are made out of particles. Furthermore, some mainstream scientists have concluded that we emerged from geometry.

This article discusses some of the more esoteric implications associated with our universe being created out of sacred geometry.

Sacred Geometry

Plato inscribed the following words on the entrance to his Academy:

Let no one enter herein who has not first studied geometry.

According to Plato, the five regular shapes of solid geometry symbolize the five elements, earth, air, fire, water, and the ether; these shapes are the same as the shapes in Elementary Euclidean Geometry (EEG). Three of these solids (tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron) are made up of equilateral triangles. The other two solids are the cube and dodecahedron. The seventeenth-century scientist, Johann Kepler, showed how these five regular solids, each contained in a sphere, fit together within the dodecahedron.

According to John Mitchell:

The geometer’s creation myth is an accompaniment to the traditional process of initiation which leads through the arts and sciences towards the ultimate high state of love and understanding. … Our story of how the world came into being … exists ready-made in the numbers, shapes and harmonies that are the essence of nature herself.

Sacred Geometry — How the World is Made. John Mitchell, (p 232)

From the perspective of Sacred Geometry creating the world, the Platonic solids are complemented by the Golden Spiral. The numerical equivalent of the Golden Spiral is the Fibonacci sequence.

The shape of our universe

In 2003, cosmologists published a report based on data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The cosmic microwave background provides a picture of the universe as it was some 400 000 years after the big bang. Variations in the temperature of the background radiation reflect variations in the density of the universe at this time. Astrophysicists plot the relative strength of these variations as a function of angle.

The WMAP data agrees with the predictions of the standard big bang plus inflation model of cosmology for regions of space separated by small angles. However, on larger angular scales — greater than 60° — the WMAP observations were significantly lower than this model predicted. The WMAP observations are consistent with a model in which space is finite and consists of 12 curved pentagons joined together in a sphere; in other words, space could be shaped like a dodecahedron.

There may be a number of models of our universe consistent with space being shaped like a dodecahedron. Nevertheless, the possibility of space being shaped like one of the Platonic solids is consistent with the principle of least action i.e. use an existing shape where possible.

Geography of our world

As a result of the availability of Google maps, it is now possible for anyone to examine the relationships between physical features on Earth and Neolithic structures. In 2016, Mark Vidler and Catherine Young published the results of their research. They:

… reveal that order is everywhere on Earth. On remote islands, soaring summits, and level deltas, they unveil natural topographic patterns related to pi, the golden ratio, and right-triangle geometry. And as the planet’s design emerges, it becomes clear that this hidden order in nature decided the location of ancient monuments the world over.

Through detailed maps, Vidler and Young show how the location of megalithic monuments reflect and enhance a natural pattern on the Earth that connects its major features. … The authors examine the geography of many islands and each continent, including Antarctica, to show how the highest peak on each landmass falls on a line connecting coastal extremes. They reveal how circles of standing stones and man-made mounds mark intersections of these lines.

Sacred Geometry of the Earth. Mark Vidler and Catherine Young, Inner Traditions, 2016, (Backcover)

According to Vidler and Young:

From the Azores to the Canary Islands, the Greek Islands, the Caribbean Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia, and the New Hebrides, fully 98% of the islands measured conform to the same consistent pattern. It is a near certainty that the highest point on any island in the world will align with two land-mass corners in the manner found in Orkney. This pattern of alignments appears to be “everywhere,” exactly as Hermes says in the Hermetica, and it is this alignment principle that the monument builders repeatedly copy. (ibid, p179 - 180)

Some researchers claim to have discovered the Earth has a grid of Ley lines and Hertz lines. These lines suggest that our ancestors may have had access to knowledge about how energy moves across the Earth’s surface. This grid seems to consist of geometrical shapes. Is it possible that the ‘creators’ of our universe are using the topology of Earth to convey the idea that the universe is a mathematical construction?

Discovering our universe

One of the reasons why our universe appears to be consistent with features in Sacred Geometry is that our universe is designed so that we can discover how it works. Like learning how to ride a bike, we can be told how to ride the bike but we need to have the experience of riding for ourselves. The universe reveals itself in a way that requires us to have the experience of discovery not just be told about how the universe works. Furthermore, that learning process needs to happen as a group exercise not one person making the discovery on their own. Our experience on Earth is similar to a group training session. We learn through working as a team. Learning takes practice.

The question for this article is:

Could our universe be designed by a computer program?

To view the headings of all the articles to be published in this series please click on https://michaeledalton.medium.com/orbiting-stars-and-origin-of-our-universe-338906930f51

To obtain a copy of the book ‘Orbiting Stars’ which contains the first drafts of all these articles, please visit https://www.amazon.com